- FTSE 100 closes 30 points higher
- Trump dubs DeepSeek a 'wake-up call'
- Nvidia edges up as tech sell-off peters out
4.56pm: A positive session
London's blue-chip index finished 30 points to the good on Tuesday, up 0.35% at 8,533.87.
Credit checker Experian PLC (LSE:EXPN), up 3.7%, topped the leaderboard, ahead of engineer Spirax Group PLC (LSE:SPX) and health and safety equipment supplier Halma PLC (LSE:HLMA).
Tech investor Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust PLC (LSE:SMT) was up there too, recovering from large losses the day before.
Housebuilders Baratt Redrow and Persimmon, and B&Q owner Kingfisher, kitchen fitter Howden Joinery and retailers were also among the risers.
Miners were among the big fallers, with Antofagasta, Fresnillo, Glencore and Rio Tinto down between 2.2% and 1.8%.
Smiths Group (LSE:SMIN) fell 2% after the engineer said it had been hit by a cyber attack.
4.02pm: FTSE 100 heads for positive finish but misses record
The FTSE 100 entered late trading on the front foot, having racked up a 43-point gain to sit at 8,547 come the afternoon.
Though still up for the day, a scaling back late on meant London’s blue chips had missed out on racking up a new record, having sat just off at as high as 8,569 earlier.
Spirax Group PLC, with a 4.2% rise, headed the risers alongside Halma PLC and Barratt Redrow PLC.
Beazley PLC dropped 2.0% to lead the fallers in the meantime, ahead of Fresnillo PLC and Smiths Group PLC.
3.48pm: Fashion firm Quiz on verge of collapse
Fashion retailer Quiz is reportedly on the verge of collapsing into administration just days after its shares were delisted from the London Stock Exchange.
According to Sky News, Teneo is set to be appointed administrator before the end of next week.
Quiz, which has around 60 stores and roughly 1,500 staff, would be restructured to allow the founding Ramzan family to regain control of fewer sites and employees, the report said.
Quiz was last week said to have been preparing to close up to a third of its stores, while shareholders earlier in the month overwhelmingly backed the company being taken private.
Citing a bad Christmas, the retailer had warned in late December that it only had cash to last until early 2025.
3.25pm: HSBC to rein back investment banking
HSBC Holdings PLC is set to scale back investment banking in the UK, Europe and North America under chief executive Georges Elhedery’s restructuring plan.
At the end of last year, HSBC announced a split into four operations divided geographically by east and west as part of US$3 billion in cost cuts.
“We will retain more focused M&A and equity capital markets capabilities in Asia and the Middle East, and we will look to wind down those activities in Europe, the UK and the Americas,” an HSBC spokesperson told Reuters.
“Our intention is to move to a more competitive, scalable, financing-led model,” the firm said in a memo to staff.
Reports have suggested that Elhedery’s plan to streamline HSBC will mean 40% of the bank’s 175 top managers depart alongside more junior staff.
2.55pm: FTSE 100 has record in sights
A rally among London’s blue chips on Tuesday took the FTSE 100 up 66 points to reach 8,569 and bring its record intraday high within touching distance.
Having hit an all-time high of 8,584 last week, Tuesday’s gain meant the FTSE 100 was within 15 points of yet another high come the afternoon.
Spirax Group PLC continued to head the day’s risers with a 3.7% gain, ahead of Barratt Redrow PLC following positive house market data from Foxtons and Rightmove.
Centrica PLC, Marks and Spencer Group PLC, Associated British Foods PLC and Whitbread PLC were also among the day’s winners.
An overall lack of exposure to the technology sector had left the FTSE 100 virtually untouched in Monday's DeepSeek-sparked sell-off.
2.43pm: Wall Street gains as tech sell-off withers away
Wall Street enjoyed a brighter start on Tuesday after technology stocks faced a hammering earlier in the week.
The Nasdaq edged up 0.3% after the opening bell, as the S&P 500 ticked up by 0.2%.
Both remained well off Friday’s closing levels though, having dropped by 3.1% and 2.5% respectively on Tuesday as their exposure to a tech sell-off, sparked by China’s DeepSake, weighed.
Nvidia Corp, having shed almost 17% and US$600 billion in value on Monday, edged up 1% as trading got underway.
The Dow Jones moved just above the mark in the meantime, placing the index on course for consecutive gains to kick off the week.
Among reporters, Boeing Co jumped 5.3% early on after unveiling anticipated hefty losses for the fourth quarter but citing progress in stabilising operations.
General Motors Co slumped 7.6% as news of expectation-beating earnings were clouded by wider woes around the US auto industry and billions in charges to restructure its Chinese operations and stop funding its Cruise robotaxi business.
2.26pm: Rightmove, Foxtons up as buying jumps, rent falls for first time since Covid
Rightmove PLC and Foxtons PLC gained on Tuesday after each offered updates on the housing market.
According to Rightmove, rents outside London had fallen for the first time before Covid recently.
More rental properties coming onto the market were cited as the reason, though rents overall still rose between October and December as costs in London continued to rise.
Rents in the capital rose to an average of £2,695 per calendar month (pcm), up by 0.1% higher than the previous quarter while the rest of the country saw a 0.2% dip to £1,341 pcm for newly advertised properties.
Foxtons separately flagged house-selling activity had surged ahead of April's hike to stamp duty in a trading update.
Rightmove climbed 1.6% on Tuesday, as Foxtons ticked up 2.7%.
Centrica PLC led risers on the FTSE 100 in the meantime, gaining 4.1% as the index climbed 61 points to 8,565.
1.44pm: Storm Herminia arrives hot on heels of Eowyn
Storm Herminia has prompted further weather warnings days after Storm Eowyn wreaked havoc.
Warnings were in place across the south of England and Wales until Tuesday evening, as gusts of up to 84 miles per hour and as much as 59.4 millimetres of rainfall were recorded in some areas.
Other places could see up to 80 millimetres of rainfall, the Met Office forecast.
Some 37 flood warnings had been issued as of Tuesday morning, after a major incident was declared in Somerset, where over 100 people were evacuated from homes, earlier in the week.
The storm comes soon after Eowyn battered parts of Ireland and Scotland and left thousands still without power as of Monday.
“Things are going to stay unsettled in the next few days. We’re getting successive spells of wet and windy weather, which is obviously adding to impacts,” meteorologist Marco Petagna said.
“While not as powerful as Storm Eowyn, a low-pressure system was named Storm Herminia by meteorologists in Spain which was expected to feel the strongest winds.”
1.19pm: Civil Aviation Authority staff to strike for first time in 40 years
Prospect union has announced its members from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will walk out on strike next month for the first time in 40 years.
Having taken action short of a strike since mid-January, Prospect said on Tuesday that members from the regulator would walk on for 24 hours on February 6.
“Ongoing action short of a strike could cause delays across the industry to things like fleet refits, the introduction of new models, licensing of new hanger facilities,” it said.
Some 400 workers are involved in the dispute over pay, which Prospect noted followed a 3% to 4% increase offer after the CAA went “through the motions of negotiating”.
“There is still time to avoid further industrial action which will be damaging for the industry but the employer needs to restart good faith negotiations,” deputy general secretary Rachel Curley commented.
“This is not an issue that is going to just go away and if it continues it will start to impact airlines causing delays to planned upgrades with a knock-on effect felt by passengers.”
A CAA spokesperson responded that news of the strike was “disappointing” but assured the sector was unlikely to be affected.
“Prospect members make up around one in five of our employees and we do not anticipate any disruption to the aviation sector, or any impact on our regulatory oversight activities or other safety-critical work, as a result of this action,” they said.
12.53pm: London house-selling activity booms before stamp duty hike
Estate agent Foxtons PLC has reported a surge in house-selling activity across London ahead of a hike in stamp duty that comes into effect from April.
The capital had the highest number of houses under offer since before Brexit, it said on Tuesday.
“The growth in the under-offer pipeline is partly driven by first-time buyer activity ahead of increased stamp duty rates from April 2025, which may result in some buyer activity being accelerated into the first quarter of 2025 ahead of the deadline,” said a statement from the London-listed group... Read more
12.29pm: European stocks hit record high
European stocks notched up a new record high on Tuesday after largely avoiding the effects of a global tech sell-off earlier in the week, which appeared to soon end anyway.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 climbed as high as 533 to surpass a previous all-time peak, seen a year ago, before scaling back slightly for a 0.6% gain for the day.
Retailers JD Sports Fashion PLC and B&Q owner Kingfisher PLC were among those to buoy the index, while those hit by Monday’s DeepSeek-fuelled sell-off regained.
Semiconductor equipment maker ASML Holding NV, having shed 7%, moved 0.3% higher on Tuesday.
European markets were largely in the green in the meantime.
Scope Markets analyst Joshua Mahony noted European traders were enjoying “a brief period of outperformance built around the general lack of big tech companies this side of the Atlantic”.
He added: “The questions that have emerged around a handful of huge AI-focused US tech companies provide the basis for a massive value recalibration if the DeepSeek news can be taken at face value.”
12.07pm: Smiths Group heads FTSE 100 fallers after cyber attack
Smiths Group PLC topped the FTSE 100 fallers on Tuesday after the engineering firm said it had been hit by a cyber attack.
Shares dropped 1.9% following a statement saying Smiths was “currently managing a cyber security incident” involving “unauthorised access to the company's systems”.
It added: “As soon as Smiths became aware of the unauthorised activity, the company rapidly isolated affected systems and activated business continuity plans.
“Smiths is working with cyber security experts to recover affected systems and determine any wider impact on the business.”
Smiths led the likes of Beazley PLC, Melrose Industries PLC and Glencore PLC among Tuesday’s fallers in the absence of any major movers as a result.
Spirax Group PLC gained 4.5% to head the day’s riser in the meantime, ahead of JD Sports Fashion PLC and Centrica PLC.
Overall, the FTSE 100 gained 43 points, or 0.5%, to reach 8,547, while the FTSE 350 added 0.6% and the AIM all-share ticked up 0.5%.
11.50am: Nasdaq seen higher as DeepSeek AI scare peters out
Wall Street looked set to regain slightly ahead of Tuesday’s opening bell as a global technology stock sell-off lost momentum.
Futures had the Nasdaq up 0.6% in pre-market trading, following Monday’s 3.1% drop, while the S&P 500 was seen 0.3% higher, after declining 1.5%.
The Dow Jones appeared on course to just top the mark and build on a 0.7% gain seen on Monday.
Despite Nvidia Corp’s near-17% drop, which took almost US$600 billion off its valuation, only a handful of the index’s 30 constituents fell into the red on Monday, shielding it from the wider sell-off which hammered its counterparts.
This had been sparked by the release and news of growing popularity around Chinese-based DeepSeek’s far cheaper and more efficient artificial intelligence bot.
Scope Markets analyst Joshua Mahony noted attention would now shift to a string of big-tech earnings this week as a result.
Meta Platforms Inc, Microsoft Corp and Tesla Inc are all in line to report on Wednesday, before Apple Inc on Thursday.
“Undoubtedly, we will see many adjust their statements to shed light on how new developments could drastically reduce capital expenditure,” Mahony said.
“However, it is important to weigh up the possibility that Nvidia chips remain a key component of the DeepSeek repertoire, and thus the idea that all development can be done on a shoestring budget remains unproven for the time being.”
11.27am: OpenAI, Nvidia greet DeepSeek breakthrough AI model
Both OpenAI and Nvidia Corp on Monday laid out their verdicts on DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence announcement, appearing to welcome the cheaper and less data-hungry bot.
Sam Altman, chief executive of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, vowed improvement and greeted the rival in response.
“We will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor,” he said on social media.
Nvidia, having shed US$600 billion in value during the day as jitters arose over its capital-heavy chip development, hailed the Chinese firm’s technology in the meantime.
“DeepSeek is an excellent AI advancement and a perfect example of test time scaling,” a spokesperson told CNBC.
“DeepSeek’s work illustrates how new models can be created using that technique, leveraging widely-available models and compute that is fully export control compliant.”
Assuring its chip technology were still in demand, they added: “Inference requires significant numbers of NVIDIA GPUs and high-performance networking.
“We now have three scaling laws: pre-training and post-training, which continue, and new test-time scaling.”
10.59am: Microsoft preparing offer for TikTok- Trump
President Donald Trump has said Microsoft Corp is in the running to make an offer for ban-threatened TikTok.
Trump cited “great interest in TikTok” from a string of companies when speaking to reporters.
Asked whether Microsoft was preparing an offer for the video-sharing app, he replied: “I would say yes.”
TikTok had temporarily been taken offline for its 75 million users in the US ahead of Trump’s inauguration last week, as a ban under predecessor Joe Biden approached.
Trump then delayed the ban for 75 days, offering more time for Beijing-based parent ByteDance to avoid the measure by selling the app’s US operations.
Microsoft told BBC News the company had “nothing to share at this time” regarding a bid.
ByteDance had approached Microsoft over a possible offer in August 2020, though was met with the technology giant’s management dubbing the move “the strangest thing”.
Were Microsoft to make an offer, it would join the likes of former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and reality show Shark Tank’s Kevin O'Leary, alongside YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, or MrBeast, as among those said to be in the running for TikTok.
10.06am: FTSE 100 saved from hammering by lack of tech
London’s blue chips have been unaffected by DeepSeek-related declines this week thanks to a lack of exposure to the technology sector, which, for once, has been beneficial.
As the Nasdaq tanked 3.1% and the S&P 500 shed 1.5% on Monday, the FTSE 100 managed to eke out a gain, albeit by just one point.
A further gain on Tuesday meant the FTSE 100 was up 0.6% for the week so far to outperform both tech-heavy US indices, European counterparts in Paris and Germany, alongside London’s mid-caps.
Technology stocks had been hammered globally following DeepSeek’s release of a supposedly cheaper and less data-hungry artificial intelligence bot last week.
Having called into question the relevance of so-far dominant names, the likes of Nvidia Corp took a beating, shedding almost US$600 million in value, before Tuesday appeared to bring a reprieve.
However, for the FTSE 100, exposure to the likes of oil, banking, pharmaceuticals and mining left it virtually untouched.
Indeed, it gave “no reaction to the market rout,” Swissquote Bank analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya said, which had taken around US$1 trillion off European and US stocks on Monday.
Ozkardeskaya added “the very small exposure of the British big caps to technology”, though “disquieting”, could “be interesting in case of a deeper tech selloff”.
XTB analyst Kathleen Brooks added: “If US tech dominance is permanently impacted by DeepSeek, then it could give European stocks the chance to play catch up.”
9.57am: Halfords surges as profit guidance hiked
Halfords Group PLC jumped on Tuesday after upping its profit expectations for the current year on better sales than expected in its latest quarter, especially in cycling.
Christmas gifting of bikes contributed to retail like-for-like sales growth of 13.1% in December, while autocentres also produced a strong performance in the more profitable and strategically important Services, Maintenance and Repair (SMR) market, said the FTSE 250 group.
SMR sales in consumer garages grew 10.3% in the third quarter, while current trading has benefitted from the recent colder weather with Motoring Product delivering LfL sales growth in January of 5.5%.
Foreign exchange and cost savings have also moved in the Halfords’ favour said the statement.
All-in-all the improvement in trading allied to pricing and promotion strategies plus cost savings will mean 2025 underlying profit before tax of between £32 million to £37 million... Read more
Shares jumped 19.3% to 150.33p on the news.
9.24am: Irn-Bru maker jumps after flagging double digit-profit growth
AG Barr PLC climbed over 5% on Tuesday after the soft drinks maker flagged stronger revenue and profit for the year.
Revenue was expected to have climbed by 5% to around £420 million, AG Barr reported on Tuesday, as its adjusted operating margin saw a “strong” increase to 13.5%.
Profit growth would be in the double digits as a result, the company added, as year-end cash climbed from £53.6 million to £60 million.
All three of AG Barr’s core soft drinks brands, including Irn-Bru, Rubicon and Boost, were said to have performed strongly.
“AG Barr is in line to deliver another year of strong top-line growth, margin improvement and cash generation,” chief executive Euan Sutherland commented.
“These headline metrics highlight excellent progress towards our long-term financial goals.
“We have sustained brand momentum despite the well-trailed wider market pressures, and continue to make good progress towards our margin target.”
Shares climbed 5.5% to 615p on Tuesday.
8.51am: Nvidia shares bounce back in Frankfurt
Nvidia Corp’s Frankfurt-listed shares have bounced back in early trade as Monday’s global tech sell-off appeared to peter out.
Having been victim of heavy selling over jitters sparked by the release of DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence bot last week, shares regained 5% to reach €118.46 early on.
In the US, shares had dropped by almost 17% on Monday, sending Nvidia’s market cap spiralling by nearly US$600 billion.
Swissquote Bank analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya noted Monday’s sell-off may have been “overdone”.
“There are reports praising DeepSeek’s performance, some experts say it’s impressive, others say it’s disruptive, and Nvidia itself said that the company came up with something ‘excellent’ – using a lot of its less advanced chips.
“But beyond the fact that the company used less advanced and cheaper Nvidia chips to build its model, there are a lot of unanswered questions about DeepSeek, including whether its model could be integrated and used by other applications and whether the company really built a model for less than US$6 million whereas the price mark of the US AI models reaches several hundred million dollars.
“DeepSeek looks like it made something that already existed for a cheaper price. But it did not come up with an end product that did not exist.”
8.35am: FTSE 100 heads higher early on
London’s blue chips racked up a gain early on Tuesday, with the FTSE 100 adding 24 points to reach 8,528.
Having avoided a beating in line with the technology-focused Nasdaq and S&P 500 on Monday, the rise meant the FTSE 100 was on course for back-to-back daily gains.
Rentokil Initial PLC headed the early risers, gaining 3.7% after pointing to in-line trading for the year, alongside announcing the departure of its US chief executive.
Spirax Group PLC and B&Q owner Kingfisher PLC followed in the meantime, while Smiths Group PLC led the fallers, down 1.5%.
8.14am: Trump says DeepSeek a ‘wake-up call’ for US AI firms
Donald Trump has said America’s artificial intelligence industry was dealt a “wake-up call” in DeepSeek’s cheaper and more efficient bot.
Following a global tech sector sell-off on Monday, the president reassured the US would remain dominant in the AI space and that DeepSeek’s development could be a positive.
“If you could do it cheaper [and] get to the same end result. I think that's a good thing for us,” he told reporters on board Air Force One.
Nvidia Corp had been among those to get hammered as news broke of growing popularity of DeepSeek’s model, which was released last week.
Shares shed 16.9% over the day, equating to almost US$600 billion of its market capitalisation, as jitters arose over the relevance of so-far dominant players.
DeepSeek’s open-source model was said to have been trained for roughly US$6 million, which, though disputed, would compared to billions spent by rivals.
7.59am: Pets at Home revenue hit by weak demand
Pets at Home Group PLC has said revenue fell in the third quarter as demand came under pressure on a “more challenging” consumer backdrop.
Group revenue fell by 0.2% to £361.6 million in the three months to January, the pet retailer said on Tuesday, or by 1.0% on a like-for-like basis.
Vet group revenue jumped by 21.3%, as the division’s strong performance was offset by softness in the retail business, Pets at Home noted.
“As widely reported across the consumer sector, [the third quarter] saw a more challenging UK consumer backdrop with particularly weak footfall from October.”
Pets at Home stuck to full-year guidance for “modest growth” in underlying pre-tax profit, though said costs related to changes in distribution would be fully realised this year.
Non-underlying costs of £11 million were expected, against £7 million previously, as the transition from its Stafford to Northampton distribution centre was carried out.
Pets at Home also flagged it would end the year with a “robust balance sheet” after capital expenditure of £55 million and returning £85 million to shareholders.
7.33am: Rentokil flags in-line trading as US boss to depart
Rentokil Initial PLC's North American chief executive will depart after trading matched expectations last year, the pest control firm said Tuesday.
Brad Paulsen will step down in April and be replaced by chief commercial officer Alain Moffroid on an interim basis.
Paulsen was leaving “to pursue a new opportunity at a US publicly listed company in the building materials sector,” Rentokil added.
Rentokil also signalled in-line trading over the last year as its North American integration continued “to plan”.
Group organic revenue climbed by 3.0% over the fourth quarter, aided by a 2.3% uptick across the American wing as services saw “improved momentum in inbound lead flow”.
“[Fourth quarter] pilots of new satellite branches, new technician and sales pay plans, and first re-routing and re-branding activities were delivered to plan,” Rentokil noted.
On Moffroid, Rentokil said: “He is a highly experienced leader in the company with extensive experience of both residential and commercial pest control.”
Moffroid was “currently working closely with the North American business on its customer experience and retention, digital and innovation programmes” and would fully join in the coming weeks.
7.12am: Stocks to drop
The FTSE 100 was seen dipping into the red ahead of Tuesday’s trading, with futures pointing to a 26-point drop to 8,492.
London’s blue-chips had edged up one point on Monday, as the index’s lack of exposure to technology saw it avoid a beating after China’s DeepSeek sparked a global sell-off.
Following last week’s unveiling of a cheaper and more efficient artificial intelligence programme, analysts called into question so-far big names in the sector.
Nvidia Corp shares shed 16.9%, equating to almost US$600 in value, on Monday as a result, while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 slumped 3.1% and 1.5% respectively.
Asian markets then faced a mixed showing overnight, with Japan’s Nikkei the biggest faller with a 1.4% decline.
5.00am: Shop prices fall but warnings over Budget-fuelled inflation
Shop prices eased once again in January but could begin to pick up again in the coming months as retailers grapple with growing Budget-related costs.
According to the BRC-NielsenIQ index, shop prices declined by 0.7% last month, against a 1.0% drop in December as non-food deflation continued.
Non-food product prices fell by 1.8%, fuelled by declines for furniture and fashion in particular, BRC head Helen Dickinson said.
Food inflation eased in the meantime but remained in positive territory, climbing by 1.6%, compared to 1.8% previously, to reflect its lowest rate since November 2021.
Dickinson warned that subsiding prices would likely meet an abrupt end as measures unveiled in October’s Budget fed through to retailers in the coming months, however.
“Price cuts and deflation may not last much longer as retailers will soon feel the full impact of £7 billion of new costs announced at the last Budget,” she said.
“Higher employer national insurance contributions, increased national living wage, and a new packaging levy mean that prices are expected to rise across the board.”
She reiterated calls on the government to avoid hitting retailers with higher business rates, adding: “Without action, UK households will feel the effects.”
Tuesday's schedule
Tuesday brings an update from Pets at Home, before the likes of Boeing, General Motors and Starbucks report from across the Atlantic.
Pets at Home has been battling with subdued growth across the wider market... Read more
Announcements due:
Trading updates: AG Barr PLC, Computacenter PLC, Harworth Group PLC, Pets at Home Group PLC
Interims: Time Finance PLC
Finals: Idox PLC, Sthree PLC
US earnings: Boeing Co, General Motors Company, Starbucks Corp
AGMs: Finsbury Growth & Income Trust PLC, Lowland Investment Company PLC, Ncc Group PLC, Group PLC
Economic announcements: Durable Goods Orders (US), House Price Index (US), Consumer Confidence (US)